Dragon Ball Sparking Zero

PS5 Review

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is the newest Dragon Ball fighting game and a successor to the Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi game series with the last game being the 3^rd entry released back in 2007 (Which will be shortened to BT3 for brevity).

The game is developed by the same studio as the original trilogy Spike, and the BT series was just it’s localised name for the West as in Japan it was always known as the Sparking series of games (Sparking, Sparking Neo and Sparking Meteor).

So while it is great to see the series return under it’s original Japanese title for worldwide release it is interesting to go with the “Zero” suffix when it is technically the 4^th game in the series, unless Spike has plans for a new trilogy or series to start over the numbering with.

Pro:

Art style.

Sparking Zero is built using the Unreal Engine 5 developed by Epic Games and is the most advanced game engine used on any Dragon Ball game to date, as it’s a whole generation ahead of Dragon Ball FighterZ, the last fighting game focused Dragon Ball game, that used Unreal Engine 4 back in 2018.

Due to this increase of power behind a new game engine, as well as a whole new console generation ahead, by being a native PS5 and Xbox Series X game, allows Sparking Zero to be even more graphically intensive and it really shows with the game boasting some of the best visuals in an Anime based game with certain battles visually looking like they are straight out of Anime with how great everything looks and sounds.

Gameplay.

Sparking Zero builds upon everything that makes BT3 a legendary game as now Sparking Zero has more responsive controls, more fluid animations, more visually impressive particle effects.

Sparking Zero only elevates on what came before and how to refine while not taking away, as nothing major has been removed from the combat system of BT3 with only new mechanics being added.

As now they game has more defensive options available to the player; with Revenge Counters to use up skill points to perform a combo breaker, as seen in other fighting games, to avoid being stun locked completely by opponents if the player is not able to perform the vanish mechanism returning from BT 3 consistently.

Roster.

Sparking Zero features the largest roster out of any Dragon Ball game at launch with a total of 182 characters (183 with a special pre order) beating out BT that had just over 160 characters back in 2007.

Sparking Zero features characters from every era of Dragon Ball from the original, Z, GT and Super, with the majority of famous characters being playable, with the exception being the cast of the original Dragon Ball which is severally underrepresented along with its films.

So players will never get bored or run out of characters to play, as with a roster this large meaning that every player has one of their favourite characters available to use, and while some of the roster aren’t featured in the Episode Battle they are all fully voiced and have full movesets, compared to BT3 that featured a lot of recycled special moves among the weaker members of the roster.

What if scenarios.

Building upon the mini non canon changes players can perform in the story mode for BT3, such as beating opponents without transforming or winning certain fights, now Sparking Zero features full ‘what if scenarios’ with full cut scenes that spin off from the main path in Episode battle called Sparking Episodes.

Each character in Episode Battle has at least one Sparking Zero with the one featured in the advertising heavily from the start of Dragon Ball Z with what would happen if Goku didn’t die in battle against Raditz. This creates an interesting path where Goku didn’t go to train with King Kai and thus when Nappa & Vegeta invaded Goku was still alive but missing those techniques he used in the main timeline to beat the Saiyans.

Without going into heavy spoilers, I would recommend players try out all of these Sparking Episodes since they are all fully voice acted with cut scenes and create some interesting scenarios that fans have debated for decades at this point.

My personal favourites being from the Future Trunks Episode Battles as he has 3 distinct ‘What if’ paths and how they could have been potentially more interesting than what fans saw in the official canon.

Custom episode battle.

Players have the ability to make a mini episode of the Anime through the use of the brand-new Custom Battle feature.

Using it allows players to create cut scenes with dialogue using built in preprogramed lines, with certain parts being interchangeable like character names.

Players can then upload their finished battles online for other players to try out and download other Custom Battles with players able to see how many people have played and finished them.

DP Battles.

The new premier online multiplayer way to fight is using DP (Destruction Points) where players are limited to only 15DP per team.

This makes online battles a lot more fun and varied, as instead of players using a team of the 5 strongest characters in the game they have to put more thought into it, as Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta is worth 10 points by himself for one character, so players can use him then one other 5 cost character, compared to other people who build a full team of 4+ characters by spending their DP wisely, so even if each individual character is weaker then they win by strategy and outlasting the opponent.

World Tournament mode.

The World Tournament returns from BT3, and sees the player take on various pre-set tournaments, with special rules like the standard Budokai Tenkaichi tournament having a ring out mechanic to instantly lose or the Tournament of Power, having players not being able to fly onto jump or dash.

A new feature to Sparking Zero is being able to play these various tournaments online with multiplayer for the first time, so players can play with friends online and are no longer limited to couch co-op only.

Main menu details.

Compared to the older games, that just had static menus with some occasional background 2D art that was animated with a few voice clips, Sparking Zero instead has full 3D environments for each of their menus.

For example, the menu for the Story Mode with Episode Battle or Custom Battles takes place as Capsule Corp, with all of Bulma’s family there along with Beerus & Whis, and each option selected focuses on one of the different characters, with animations such as Episode Battle having Whis project the past battles of the Anime for Beerus to watch, since Whis is his attendant and wants to appease his boredom.

Other menus like the Shop menu have Goku visiting Kame House where Master Roshi, Krillin and 18 with 18 navigating the player inside to access the shop by watching the TV and buying items with how TV shopping works.

Story mode camera.

One new feature that wasn’t in the marketing much is that players can change to a first-person camera view during the majority of the cut scenes.

This creates a fun new dynamic being able to experience the classic Anime cut scenes from a new perspective and for the brand new ‘what if’ scenarios through the Sparking episodes. With my personal favourite being from the cut scene where Gohan and Future Trunks sealed Fused Zamasu using the Mafuba, as the player has the perspective of Gohan performing the technique and seeing Zamasu get sealed.

Encyclopedia returns.

One of the funniest features returns from BT3, that involved Chi-Chi doing a verbal description of each character in the model viewer to give more backstory and what she personally thinks of each character. This led to many a meme in the community, of her calling every Super Saiyan abled character a delinquent, parodying the Anime where she made the same remark to Goku, Gohan And Goten when they were Super Saiyan.

Now in Sparking Zero not only is the Encyclopedia back with not only Chi-Chi returning but also Bulma and Videl, so it’s great to hear these voice actresses back and given more of a role as the descriptions of each character are also longer but more comedic.

Due to the larger character roster in Sparking Zero there is a lot of extra content that players will miss, as all 180+ characters all get a conversation about them and how they impacted the Dragon Ball universe from the main Anime to the non canon films from Z, GT and Super.

Starting Zeni.

When booting up the game for the first time with a fresh save file, the game gives the player 500,000 Zeni for free, that players can then spend on unlocking characters to use straight away in multiplayer without having to unlock them in Episode Battle.

Other uses early on are to buy extra costumes for the characters or buying more songs to play in battle from the in-game OST, only without the famous Anime soundtrack, which can’t be bought using in-game currency only through micro transactions.

Con:

Frame rate.

During my play through on a base PS5 the gameplay was usually 60fps smooth, but I noticed slowdown when there was a lot of particle effects on screen at a time or a lot of terrain was destroyed in a short of time, like in the City map.

The frame rate also took a noticeable hit when playing online multiplayer, even when the opponent had a good stable connection, but against others with lower rated Wi-Fi then the frame rate would drop to the low 30fps, like it was with playing BT3 on the PS2 16 years ago.

Other maps hold up better, like with the World of the Kai’s or the desert map, which have noticeably less destructible terrain, or with simple geometry as during Episode Battle or Tournament matches that those maps rarely had slowdown aside from using heavy particle dense attacks.

Story mode.

Episode Battle acts as the story mode for this game, and instead of acting as a linear progression of the Dragon Ball story, it is now chopped up into different characters and their arcs.

Goku has the main bulk of the fights this time around, going from the start of Z with the attack of Raditz to the end of Super with the finale of the tournament of power.

The issue arises with how badly segmented the story becomes and how lopsided the distribution of battles become. With the prime example being Vegeta who canonically fights all the way till the end of Super with his main opponents being playable characters in game like Cabba and Toppo, but for some reason his story mode ends after the Majin Buu fights in Z and never carries on to Super, even though he had plenty of fights in the Anime and films.

The cut scenes before each fight are also frustrating, as there is on average at least 5+ seconds of unskippable cutscene before the player has the option to begin skipping forward. But the problem doesn’t stop there, since there are multiple cutscenes and the player can only skip one at a time instead of skipping all at once and going straight to the next fight.

Even the text doesn’t automatically continue from screen to screen in a cutscene, instead needing the player to manually progress the text to the next text box to carry on the cutscene.

Dragon Orbs.

The Dragon Orbs are items the player can receive from wishes made to Shenron, Porunga or Super Shenron to a limit of 1 Dragon Orb from Porunga and Super Shenron each.

These items are needed to reduce the difficulty of the optional objectives in Episode Battle to unlock the what if scenarios. They do this by extending the hidden timer on the time-based missions but seem to have no effect on other objectives that don’t revolve around a timer.

Given how many different branching paths and how slow it is to collect the sets of Dragon Balls it would have reduced the amount of grinding if players could just buy them in the in-game shop using game currency. 

If the developers wanted to make them exclusive to wishes, then make it so the player receives multiple at a time rather than just one. As otherwise to get unlimited Dragon Orbs then the player has to grind for the Earth Dragon Balls only to summon Shenron, as the other dragons only have a limit of one then don’t offer them again.

This slows down the pace of the game drastically if the player needs to help to accomplish the secondary objectives to play the new what if scenarios, as players can spend up to an hour at a time to get the full set of Earth Dragon Balls, only to receive one Dragon Orb in return.

Enemy AI.

The enemy A.I is very hit or miss in this game and feels very over tuned, to  coin flip the A.I doesn’t fight back at all or can stun you in a 60 hit combo from the start of the match and kill the player without being able to fight back. 

This became more of an issue later in Episode Battle in the Super portion of the story mode as when facing off against Beerus and other late game fighters who seem to read the players inputs, as I’ve had to perform 3+ vanish counters in a row at times, only ending when they run out of Ki and not because they failed the input.

This is also an issue when trying to accomplish the objectives in Episode Battle to unlock the various ‘what if’ scenarios, as depending on how the A.I feels they can make the player fail by repeatedly fleeing to the edge of the arena to wait out the time limit.

It would make the game fairer if the A.I was patched so it only performs input reading and has perfect reaction speed on a new higher difficulty, instead of just on the default regular option.

Unresponsive controls.

A major issue that personally affected my time with the game was when the game failed to accept my inputs.

This happens in two different ways, the first being that R1 to vanish away from attacks does not feel as responsive as it did back in BT3, both offline and online, but the issue was more pronounced online. This was an issue with episode battles where the opponent was able to perfect vanish often on the regular difficulty especially later in the mode.

The other time was during regular combat both offline and online, where my character would just go unresponsive and not accept any inputs at all and stand there static until hit by the opponent, one online match I even recorded using the inbuilt capture system when it happened and my controls completely locked up.

That felt the most frustrating where the game actively became unresponsive and should not happen in a fighting game that focuses on lighting fast reflexes where every input matters and hopefully the game gets patched to solve both of these input problems that cropped up during the play through.

Can’t fully rebind controls.

When first playing the game and wanting to test out the new control options with either Standard or Classic I was surprised to find that the player is able to change the button layout but only to a few specific choices instead of being free to rebind everything.

As trying to change the new Revenge Counter mechanic the game defaulted to putting it on R3, making it cumbersome to use as it requires the pressing in of a thumb stick instead of a simple button press. So, when trying to change to one of the shoulder buttons to rebind instead of either ascend or descend I was surprised to find the only other option I was allowed to set it to was L3, instead of being given the option to freely rebind it to a button of my choice.

In the modern age of gaming a player should be able to fully rebind the buttons to whatever they prefer or feel comfortable with, as that would also make the game more accessible to players who are more physically impaired and require the extra flexibility that free rebinds give the player.

No option menu in pause menu.

A strange choice was discovering that the game didn’t give the player the option to enter the option menu from the pause screen.

As when first booting up the game and going over to the train menu I wanted to change the key bindings to see what felt more natural and test out exactly what the new accessibility options meant during a fight, but instead found that I had to back out of a fight entirely to then be able to go into the options and change the settings.

Accessibility options.

The extra accessibility options in this game are useful to newcomers the issue I encountered was how vague they were and didn’t explain well to the player exactly what they did.

For example, it has the name of the option with assist adding onto the end with the option “Yes or No” and the tooltip reading “Change X mechanic assist setting” but that doesn’t convey to the player what exactly is being changed by the setting. So, more clarity in the tooltips would be welcomed, as to actually explain what the accessibility option is changing to be more accessible to players.

Certain Clash QTEs.

While the majority of the clashes were easy to figure out after using the training mode there was one in particular that never seemed to work and was the one that featured with doing repeated vanishes.

No matter when I pressed the input in the animation it would always seem to fail and turn red and crack, leading to taking damage and being knocked back even though the correct input was used every time.

Soundtrack.

The soundtrack for Sparking Zero was a let down compared to prior games. The previous BT games each had a unique intro song for the opening cut scene but Sparking Zero reused “Limit Break X Survivor” the opening song from Dragon Ball Super with the Tournament of Power arc instead of something new.

The in-game music is also less memorable than prior games, with some more music being able to be bought from the in-game shop. However the most frustrating part is that if the player wants to play with any of the other Anime music from the classic Cha-La Head Cha-La opening from DBZ or Solid State Scouter from the Bardock Special, then the player has to spend extra money on the optional Anime music DLC for an added cost, as it’s split across 2 packs instead of one larger one and then has the player spending £24 for both packs of Anime songs, instead of being unlockable by in-game methods like how the player unlocks characters.

Main menus lag.

When changing between each menu tab there was also a couple of seconds of delay as the NPCs spawn in and the animations starts. This makes it very choppy when going through multiple screens at once.

So instead of smoothly going through each menu option, like BT3, it takes several seconds to get to the option the player wants to select, like going from online multiplayer to the shop screen to spend the currency they earn from battles.

NPC voice clips in menus.

This was a minor issue that cropped up when lingering on the menus but especially on the shop menu to buy new characters or capsules.

As Bulma chips in with one of three voice lines every 2-3 seconds commentating on how she likes to spend money and Vegeta never takes her shopping, and when reading the descriptions of the capsules that takes a couple of seconds the voice lines get very annoying very quickly to the point where I had to mute the TV until I exited the shop screen.

An easy solution to this would be to put a cool down timer on voice lines since the last one played or until the player changes tabs to browse other purchasable selections like characters or voice lines.

Almost no Dragon Ball representation.

Considering how Dragon Ball started the franchise I was surprised to find that there was only 1 character from Dragon Ball being Goku (Teen) and no exclusive maps either even though there were a couple in BT3 like Muscle Tower or Demon King Piccolo’s compound.

As even Dragon Ball GT which is a lot less beloved than original Dragon Ball has multiple characters with the big villains of the arcs in Baby and Omega Shenron being playable fighters.

Limited number of maps.

Compared to Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3 that has 23 maps at release back in 2007, I was surprised to find that Sparking Zero only launched with 12 maps.

These figures don’t take into account the variations of both sets of maps as other BT3 would have 35 maps instead of 23.

With the focus on Dragon Ball Super for a lot of the roster and Episode battle it left the game lacking a lot of classic stages that were previous game mainstays, as there is no original Dragon Ball or GT maps instead having just maps for Z or Super.

Old fan favourite maps like Kame House, Kami’s Lookout, Glacier or even Hell, which was a very popular stage in BT3, are all absent without any interesting maps to take their place. As the most standout map for Sparking Zero is the Tournament of Power stage since that has it’s own unique ruleset of no flying and ring outs if the fighter falls off the edge of the arena into the abyss.

Special finishers for matches.

Upon seeing the trophy list for the game I noticed how there was a trophy for “Viewed 20 special finishers” which means to finish a match using one of the select special finishers from Goku using the Angry Kamehameha, Master Roshi using the Mafuba or Goku as Super Saiyan 3 using the Dragon Fist technique.

So, you have to end the fight using one of those 3 specific finishers, but I was surprised to find that there were only 3 special finishers in a roster of over 180 characters. Meaning that only ~1.6% of the cast has access to one of these moves.

I would prefer this to be expanded to more of the cast as there are plenty of special finishing moments from the Anime, but also the 21 theatrical films that have been released since 1986. It would be a shame if this was rectified through paid DLC instead of free title updates.

Animation length.

Compared to Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3 the length of various animations is more noticeable in length.

This slows down the pace of the matches as less time is spent fighting and more time is spent watching animations play out, along with accompanying voice lines that takes all control away from both players.

This was most prevalent with the transformation mechanic and the Ultimate attacks for each fighter. An easy example to compare is to look at Goku (End) as he turns Super Saiyan 3 as his transformation and with using the Super Spirit Bomb ultimate attack against their enemy, as not only is the charging animation for the Spirit Bomb longer but the voice lines are slowed down with more empty air between each line.

If the animations were redone with a certain amount of frames taken out, then the pacing of matches will be greatly improved. This is most noticeable during Episode Battle where certain A.I spam their Ultimate attacks repeatedly making it less interactive.

Earth & Namekian Dragon Balls.

The Dragon Balls return in this game as a way to grant wishes as a means to unlock new characters or cosmetics.

The issue becomes more prevalent when trying to collect the Namekian Dragon Balls to summon Porunga. Instead of previous games where players collect them by destroying buildings during battles but now, they are a random drop chance upon successfully winning a fight.

This wouldn’t be that bad of a changeup but the odds of receiving a Dragon Ball are extremely low, as it’s more common to receive an Earth Dragon Ball from Shenron. As during my testing, I received one Namekian Dragon Ball but received five Earth Dragon Balls during the same time period.

It would be a better system if it was more balanced, so players did not have to grind for hours at a time just to summon Porunga and get access to his exclusive wishes and unlockables. As otherwise if a player only wants to collect the Dragon Balls as their focus, then it drastically slows down the pace of the game.

Online multiplayer.

During my time trying out the online component of the game I was having infrequent disconnects that booted myself from matches with no reason aside from “A communication error has occurred”.

Other online issues that cropped up were that lag was more prevalent than with offline single player, especially seen with heavy particle effects on screen like with beam struggles or the various aura power ups.

The most detrimental part is how the button responsiveness dropped especially when trying to vanish, as that was already less responsive than previous games but become much more of an issue online to the point where it felt like R1 button only worked in 25% of online matches.

Local multiplayer.

One of the biggest draws of the older BT trilogy on PS2 and Wii was being able to do local multiplayer split screen on the same TV.

For some reason, in Sparking Zero players are limited to only playing against each other on the Hyperbolic Time Chamber map with no other option, making fights more repetitive with the one map to fight on and not even having any variations like other maps have with times of day.

Conclusion: 

When the game is running smoothly it is without a doubt one of the best Dragon Ball games that players can buy and is a worth sequel to Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3 from 17 years ago.

If a player isn’t a fan of BT 3’s combat system then I would recommend other Dragon Ball games likes Xenoverse or FighterZ, but if they enjoy typical Anime arena fighting games then I would recommend Sparking Zero even to new fans of the franchise.

The only major downsides keeping the game from achieving a higher score are the poorly laid out and pacing for the main story through the Episode Battle feature and how lopsided the A.I can be, which drags down the enjoyment of the offline game. As the game doesn’t feel like it has a steady difficulty increase over the course of the game but instead one big spike at the beginning that doesn’t lower, which will be off-putting to new players who haven’t played the franchise before or even some returning players after 14 years.

Score: 8.9